Eagle Forum Legislative Alerts

Thursday, March 28, 2013

The new federal curriculum called Common Core, which the public is calling ObamaCore, has stirred up parents to investigate what the curriculum is teaching and not teaching. In Minnesota, citizens submitted enough requests to force an administrative law judge to hear their concerns abut the new social studies curriculum. At a hearing in December, parents presented testimony about the poor content, lack of rigor and even the standards' violations of several laws. Those presenting testimony against the ObamaCore curriculum included two college professors, two state legislators, a former Advanced Placement biology teacher, a woman raised in Communist Poland, business people, as well as several concerned parents. As an example of their testimony, some witnesses objected that the social studies standards make no mention of Christopher Columbus, Sacagaqea, Thomas Paine, William Penn, Abraham Lincoln, or Theodore Roosevelt. The standards also failed to mention liberty, patriotism, or religious freedom.
After critiquing the American history curriculum, the witnesses then turned their attention to the World History curricula and here are the names of prominent figures in World History whom the curriculum failed to mention: Leonardo de Vinci, Martin Luther, Adolf Hitler, Mao, Margaret Thatcher, and Osama bin Laden. According to one of the expert witnesses, the standards demonstrate a "failure to properly contrast the deprivation, failure, and death associated with Communism ... and free markets. A witness pointed out that the curriculum proposed "the need for students to develop skills to become effective global citizens."
Listen to the radio commentary here: